Visio Reviews

We mostly use this solution for process management and for diagram modeling. Functional diagrams or BPMN partition diagrams — that's all. Some nice drawings for presentations.

Almost all of our employees use bundled Microsoft products and because they have no administrative rights, they cannot install additional programs. We use Visio to present our diagrams to our employees as it's too complicated to explain how to use our services over and over. If we had a BPM platform and a diagram modeling solution, we would not use Visio.

Within our organization, there are roughly 100 people that use this solution.

I am not sure if our company has plans to keep using Visio — it's not up to me. If we were to stop using it, I wouldn't miss it.

To me, Visio doesn't really stand apart from similar solutions that I have used. When it first came out, it was quite a progressive product. As it's simply for drawing and painting diagrams, lines, flowcharts, the price is too high. I do not understand why this product is not included in the Microsoft Office package.

I personally wouldn't buy Visio even if it were 10 times cheaper because I only use it at work for diagram modeling; it's not a unique product anymore. 

It's both stable and flexible, but many features are complicated. The application grid seems to be unreliable which makes simple tasks complicated. It's not very easy to make diagrams the way I would like them to look.

It should be easier to convert to other vector graphic file formats. Auto error-correction features would also be a big help. If you have a diagram and you scroll your mouse too far, you'll lose your diagram. 

I have been using Visio for nearly two years. 

Visio is stable.

We contact them from time to time. I am satisfied with them.

My boss signed a decision and an IT support unit installed Visio. It only took a couple of minutes. There were absolutely no problems regarding the installation of the product.

Personally, I think the price of this solution is too high. I need this product for my work. I have also bought Office 365 for myself, for my personal office. But if I want to work at home, I can't use Visio due to the price.

No. But currently, we are in the process of studying other business process management solutions, including Microsoft Dynamics. 

In the near future, I would like to see an updated product with diagram usage in BPM systems.

I would recommend Visio to other companies if money is not a problem. Overall, on a scale from one to ten, I would give this solution a rating of eight.

My use case could be anything. What I like to use Visio for is business process design work. Even when we're doing a systems implementation project, I'll use it. One of the things that I tell my clients is that "Before you implement a system, you really need to check your business processes that the system is automating, to make sure that you're not automating a bad process." Therefore, we have a whole methodology on how to do business process design sessions, facilitated sessions. The outcome of those sessions is documented largely in Vizio. 

Sometimes, for example, if I've got a good person working on my team, I'll be with the client, facilitating the session and we'll have sticky notes on the wall that represent the process steps, and the outcomes, and the inputs, and all that stuff. We'll be moving those around. And then somebody on my team will be sitting there with Visio, recreating it as we go. If they aren't able to do that, we just take pictures of it and then recreate it in Visio. We clean it up and make it nice looking. However, we use Visio primarily for business and/or project process flows. 

It's a very good visualization tool that helps package everything professionally. It helps clients see where we're going. We're able to capture what we need to capture and we're able to manipulate it the way we want and make it look the way we want, and present it to our clients the way we want. 

One of the features I like is the automation involved in creating a process. It's really improved over the years. At this point, when you have step one - let's say it's a rectangle with step one in it - and then you're ready for step two, you can just hover the cursor over one side, and then it will automatically add an arrow going to the next box and automatically add a new box. It saves a bit of time there. It's one less aggravation to deal with when you're creating things.

The solution hasn't changed much in 20 years. It's a very meat and potatoes type of product and isn't overly designed. It's very easy to find your way through the solution, as it's not too complicated.

Occasionally, the automation feature that helps you easily add the "next step" goes crazy and it will move a bunch of stuff on me. Usually, that's very easily recoverable, however, that's just a little aggravation we have to deal with. It's like an ongoing glitch of sorts. You need to be careful when you are moving the whole image.

If there was a way to make the finished product more interactive somehow, that could be interesting.

I've been using the solution for decades. It's been a very long time.

The solution is quite stable. To my recollection, I haven't really had to deal with any crashes or big bugs. It's reliable.

I'm just a small consulting firm. Basically, it's just me and a group of trusted subcontractors that I network with across the country. The biggest project and the biggest team of people I've ever had on a project is 25.

We don't have enterprises that we deploy to. We just put it all on our computers or on our laptops and that's it.

I don't ever recall using technical support, and if I did, it was likely well over ten years ago at this point. Therefore, I can't really speak to their knowledgeability or responsiveness.

The initial setup is very straightforward. All you do is implement or install it on your laptop. It has a few defaults that I don't like, however, that I can change. For example, the process boxes might be colored purple or something, and I just want them clear, so that's not a big deal. There are some pre-settings you can adjust so that it defaults to how you need it to look every time.

I have a subscription to Microsoft 365 that automatically updates all of the versions to whatever is the most recent. I have to have a special subscription to get Visio though. Therefore, I've got one subscription to Microsoft that has all of the basic Office products, and then another one for Visio and Microsoft Project.

I did run across at one of my clients several years ago, another process building software. I don't remember the name of it. I'd have to look it up, however, I recall it was really slick and nice and cool. In my mind, it was a little too over-engineered and overly complicated for what I like to do. I'd have to be careful that we're not losing sight. We're not missing the forest for the trees when we get into the business process design. Therefore, I didn't really feel I was missing out by not adopting it.

I'm a consultant.

I tend to use the latest version of the solution. I try to keep everything up to date. That said, I'm unsure as to which version I'm on right now.

We're a small consulting shop. Right now, there's three of us and the roles are generally around facilitating business process design sessions. That's what we usually do is. Typically, I will stand up and facilitate with the client. We'll have a room full of clients - maybe 10, and sometimes it has the vendor - and our team. I will facilitate, we'll capture all of the discussions. We'll put everything on sticky notes, on a wall, with our methodology. And then my folks will capture all of that on Visio and on Microsoft Word. Then we go back to clean it all up and make it presentable. 

Overall, it's very easy to use. It's very intuitive and if you're documenting business processes, it does the trick. It's not like there's no other software out there that will do something similar or something as well. However, I've used Visio for so long. It's just a habit and I don't see any reason to try anything else.

I'd rate it ten out of ten. There's a reason I've been using it for so long. It does everything I need it to do without having too many confusing bells and whistles

I use Visio for diagramming configurations.

It has improved the way my organization functions because diagramming is almost similar to mind-mapping. It's a good way to get the message across and for people to understand at all levels.

Just the fact that a majority of the industry uses it, and you've got third-party templates that were created. All my vendors have templates for their products and services. It's also easy to use Visio.

I would help if they had something like a Microsoft Viewer. They also need to make this available across other platforms and not just Windows.

It would also be nice to have a portal within the product, with some agreement with third parties to get those templates through the Microsoft project portal and not have to go out there and spend time locating the templates. 

The only downside to Visio is the learning curve. Nobody off the street can pick it up that quick, and they have to learn it. They need to get some training, some tutorials, which applies to just about anything these days.

I have been using Visio for more than 15 years. 

Visio is a stable solution.

If they allowed cloud deployments, you could scale it laterally or vertically.

The initial setup is a lengthy process, but it's easy to install. But you have to import your templates, depending on whether you want to use generic ones or specific ones.

I think costs are on a per user basis.

I would advise potential users of Visio to explore the third-party templates and not limit themselves to what is provided because it's not enough.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give Visio an eight.

The most valuable features are that the user experience is simple, and it's customizable. You can customize it and connect it to data.

It has also many features that allow it to integrate Visio with SharePoint, which might be very useful in many applications.

In earlier versions, there was better database modeling. The database modeling has deteriorated significantly in the more current versions.

In Version 2000, the database modeling was pretty decent. Since then, it has deteriorated and a lot of the functionality has disappeared from Visio.

I have been using Visio for five years.

I am working with the latest version.

Now it is stable. In the past, it wasn't perfectly stable. with richer functionality, at least for the databases, but right now it's pretty stable.

The scalability has limitations. It could not model large sets of entities. 200 is probably a reasonable limit.

The initial setup is easy. It took a maximum of 15 minutes to deploy but it can be less. 

Yesterday when I installed it, it only took five minutes.

It's cheaper than other solutions.

I would recommend this solution as a starting point and as a benchmark to evaluate other tools because it is much cheaper. Also for starting modeling, database modeling, other UML, as well as other templates for modeling and business process modeling.

It integrates well with SharePoint.

It's a good tool to start working with and to use it as a benchmark with some more expensive tools. If those tools don't provide more features than Visio then they are not worth investing in.

I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

I find it really easy to use. 

You can customize the process very easy. 

You can also communicate with people ad they don't even need to have the tool. They can see the processes on the internet which makes it easy to collaborate with people that don't actually choose to use the tool. 

It's easy to use generally, due to the fact that it's really basic. 

It has also a lot of Planteria, I know how to paint in it, however, you can use different samples, depending on the structures that you want to draw. It has a lot of possiblities.

I'm working with Visio Plan 2. I find some lags on this tool. For example, I cannot manage the attributes. For example, for each figure of the process map, I cannot add any further information about it. I can't add the activity or the role that I'm using to relate to other activities. It is very limited by the information that I can use. Managing data is quite limited.

I would love to see five samples for each attempt that I include in my process. I would like to be able to add some extra information. For example, to be able to add some attributes for each item. 

To be able to extract a report for business project management notations would be ideal. Another solution, ARIS, lets you configure each item that you add to the Visio model process, and you can add some attributes that we cannot currently add. For example, calls to activity, main indicators, or a lot of descriptions, etc.

After that, to be able to export a report that shows the relation between the functions and the roles that you have related would be great. If it were possible to see different functions for each role and export it, that would be ideal.

I've been using the solution for a very, very long time. It's been about ten to eleven years at this point. 

The solution is quite stable. We haven't had any issues in that respect. It doesn't crash or freeze and it's not buggy or have glitches.

I haven't needed to reach out to technical support the entire time I've used the product. It's very basic and very simple, and therefore I've never run into any issues I haven't been able to deal with personally.

I'm actually currently looking into different options as I am finding Visio's capabilities a bit dated and limiting.

I'm just a customer. I don't have a business relationship with Visio.

For how I use the solution, it's quite good and does what I need it to do. It's unique in terms of drawing processes. That said, it is getting a little bit old. There are other solutions out there that offer many more functionalities and users can work with more information on them. That's really useful. Visio, on the other hand, doesn't have the same kind of capabilities.

That's why I'm currently looking for another application to use. I want to be able to export more information from the business process management notations. Visio could potentially improve on this, and, if they don't I will have to look elsewhere for a solution that can handle this.

Overall, I would rate the solution at a six out of ten due to its general limitations at this point.

As process improvement professional I map out current state processes either at the value stream or swim lane level, at times both. With current state I identify pain points and bottlenecks do root cause analysis, identify possible solutions, and make recommendations on which ones I think would be the most effective. Then incorporate them into a proposed future state. 

Once we developed custom templates and shape libraries it provided a common look and feel that our stakeholders have come to understand, which is helping them to develop a continuous improvement mindset. 

We are all familiar with it, and it is easy to use. There is a lot of flexibility, and you can create custom templates with standard shapes. 

It would be nice if we could develop a custom database. We have looked into this functionality, but all of the other solutions that have a database are very locked down, and you have to use them their way. You can't define your own systems, tools, and inputs etc. For example, if we have systems that are used in multiple processes, and we want to know what processes use those systems we should be able to query the database for processes that include a specific system. A uses case could be system X being phased out so we need to know what processes will be impacted, so that we can ensure that those processes are all taken into account in any decisions to replace that system.

Additionally, Visio should have the ability to capture metrics such as demand, work time, cycle time, .. for each step in the process. Then those metrics should be able to be linked to a spreadsheet to enable data analysis that remains aligned with the process map so that changes remain aligned between Visio and Excel. Other systems attempt to provide this functionality, but the spreadsheet functionality is not as robust as Excel. 

I have been using Visio for six years.

It is stable.

There are no scalability issues. We are a nationwide company, and there are around 5,000 users.

I never had to contact them.

I never used another solution long-term, but I have evaluated various and continue to see Visio as the best option. 

The initial setup was easy. It has been around for so long. All of us have used it before, so it is not like it was new to us. 

Good. 

Most other tools are expensive.  

I was already using Visio for years before evaluating other options.

I advise standardizing the file naming conventions so it is easier to find what you need when you need it. 

We primarily use the solution for business process design.

The simplicity of the solution is great. It doesn't have a lot of menus, so it's easy to navigate. 

The fact that it's on-premises allows you to get fantastic speed. It's got a faster response rate, it doesn't lag, and it doesn't have any latency when you're working on it.

The solution has a very comprehensive set of icons. It has a BPMN location and a lot of other different locations you can use at the same time.

Microsoft offers great documentation of the product.

The reason we're moving from Visio to another program is the fact that you can link the library on ARIS or Signavio. These you have to save them on the save drive which as a collaboration. It's not working for us.  There needs to be better configuration at this point. We need something a bit more flexible in that sense.

The scalability is limited.

If you look at ARIS, for example, or Signavio, the flowchart combines all the details and with the click of a button I can create a process manager. That would be something that Visio could add. It would cut my workload in half. Currently, once I'm done with drawing the flowchart, I need to take it and put it in that document and then explain what the flowchart is.

We've been using the solution for four to five years at this point.

The stability is good. It's reliable. It doesn't crash on us, or freeze. I don't recall any bugs or glitches.

The scalability is average. It's not as scalable as other options. Organizations that need to expand it may run into issues.

We have about five to ten users on the solution at our company.

I've never required technical support. I can't speak to the level of service they provide.

That said, there is great documentation, so it's pretty easy to troubleshoot by referencing those if you need to.

We've tried ARIS and Signavio. We're still looking for a solution that can replace Visio for us. We're looking for something that can link our library.

In our organization, the IT department takes care of the initial setup. I wasn't part of the deployment process.

We're just a customer. We don't have a business relationship with Microsoft.

We're using either the 2015 or 2016 version of the solution.

The first question a company needs to determine how complex the processes are and how much depth, how much detail they want to document. If it's simpler and they want to get away from the flow chart and then present it somewhere else (such as on a PowerPoint or a report) Visio is a great option.

However, if you want to actually manage your processor, simulator, have a database, or have workflows in order to get approval within different departments or, for example, create documents after a flowchart, then I'd recommend other programs.

Overall, I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

I primarily use Visio for creating mind maps and other visualizations.

I also use it for process modeling, but we are searching for a specific business process modeler because Visio doesn't have the full scope of capability that we need.

The most valuable feature is the set of diagramming tools.

It is quite flexible and easy to use.

The big downside to Visio is that it's very difficult to push the design through to Power Automate, to become a workflow that you can use.

The process modeling capability would benefit from a quick modeler tool, such as one where you use a table that is populated using the BPMN 2.0 format.

In the future, I would like to see a connection with the workflow so that you can create your model and then execute it.

I have been using Visio for about ten years.

The stability is good.

Scalability is something that needs to be improved.

The models are not linked together, so unless you're using SharePoint or you've defined your own workflow, there is no version control. This makes it more difficult to collaborate, link models, and make sure that everybody is using the latest version. Essentially, you have to build your own framework from scratch in order to do that.

We have about 100 users, most of which are end-users. It requires minimal administration.

We have not had to contact the vendor for support.

This was the first proper diagramming tool that we have used.

The initial setup is straightforward. Our IT department installed it, and I think that it took a couple of hours to deploy.

Our in-house team is responsible for the deployment, maintenance, and providing support.

Our license for Visio is including with the Office 365 subscription.

This is a product that I can recommend, albeit for limited use. If you just want to draw basic models and create systems diagrams, and not do anything too clever and link it together, then it will work well because it's quite flexible and easy to use.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.